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☆ Amazon dominated the first cloud era. The AI boom has kicked off Cloud 2.0, and the company doesn't have a head start this time.
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-04 | by ( Alistair Barr | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

There's a new stack of hardware, software, tools, and services that will power AI applications for years to come. Cloud 2.0Another key point here: Most AI developers already know how to use CUDA and Nvidia GPUs. Arguably, Nvidia has already created an AI cloud platform – as AWS once did for the Cloud 1.0 era. James Hamilton is an AWS cloud infrastructure genius who can take on Nvidia, even if the chipmaker has a major head start. Her startup spent months building a data center from scratch to help customers train AI models.

Persons: —, Jensen Huang, Nvidia Rick Wilking, Andrew Ng, CUDA, Michael Douglas, Bernstein, Douglas, Luis Ceze, Ceze, It's, Andy Jassy, Adam Selipsky, James Hamilton, Oren Etzioni, Claude, Dario Amodei, Anthropic Anthropic, Noah Berger, Sharon Zhou, Zhou, Lamini didn't, Etzioni Organizations: Amazon Web Services, Nvidia, Service, Home Depot, AWS, VMware, Cloud, Madrona Venture, Amazon, Amazon Web, Annapurna Labs, Intel, AMD Locations: San Francisco, Seattle, Selipsky

☆ In leaked recording, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wouldn't share data for his controversial RTO mandate. Said it was a 'judgement' call, like launching AWS.
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-25 | by ( Eugene Kim | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

"Those were judgment decisions by our leadership team," Jassy continued. As a leadership team, we've decided that we will be better for customers and for our business being in the office." Jassy's comments are the latest in the months-long tension between Amazon's employees and leadership team over the company's aggressive RTO policy. Amazon's top leadership looked at "a number of pieces of data" over the past two years regarding remote work, Jassy said. Another person blamed Amazon's leadership team for over-expanding during the pandemic under the belief that the hyper growth would last for a long time.

Persons: Andy Jassy, Jassy, we've, didn't, doesn't, It's, Amazon's, it's Organizations: Amazon, Services, AWS

☆ Amazon shares can rally more than 65% as cloud revenue growth reaccelerates, Redburn says
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-11 | by ( Pia Singh | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Amazon can build on its already stellar year as revenue from its cloud business picks up steam once again, according to boutique equity research firm Redburn. The analyst cited the potential for Amazon Web Services — the company's cloud computing business — to see growth reignited after a slowdown. AWS holds leading market positions in areas such as databases, data warehouses, data lakes and machine learning, Haissl said. AWS reported 12% growth in the second quarter, surpassing analysts' forecast by 200 basis points, according to the note. Haissl also expects AWS revenue to grow by more than 20% and 30% in the third and fourth quarters of this year, respectively.

Persons: Alex Haissl, Haissl, Gartner, —, Michael Bloom Organizations: Amazon Web, AWS, Amazon Locations: Thursday's, 2Q23

For the second quarter, Amazon's revenue grew 11% to $134.4 billion, beating estimates of $131.5 billion from analysts polled by Refinitiv. In recent months, Amazon Web Services (AWS) saw its sales growth slow as wary businesses scrutinized their cloud bills. The unit beat estimates of around $21.7 billion in second-quarter cloud sales, increasing them 12% to $22.1 billion. Its rivals posted bigger jumps off smaller bases: 28% growth in Alphabet's June-quarter cloud revenue and a 26% quarterly increase for Microsoft's Azure. Longer-term, Amazon aims to turn one unit, its $35 billion in yearly gross business-to-business e-commerce sales, into $100 billion, Jassy told analysts.

Persons: Pascal Rossignol, Brian Olsavsky, Olsavsky, Andy Jassy, Arun Sundaram, Sundaram, Jassy, Thomas Monteiro, Investing.com, Monteiro, Refinitiv, Chavi Mehta, Jeffrey Dastin, Noel Randewich, Arun Koyyur, Aurora Ellis, Chris Reese Organizations: REUTERS, Amazon.com Inc, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Refinitiv, Amazon Web Services, CFRA Research, Reuters, Thomson Locations: Lauwin, France, Alphabet's, Bengaluru, Jeffrey Dastin San Francisco

☆ Amazon CEO Jassy's cost cuts deliver investors biggest profit beat since 2020
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-03 | by ( Annie Palmer | In Annierpalmer | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Amazon delighted investors on Thursday, posting earnings of 65 cents a share, blowing past estimates of 35 cents a share. In Jassy's prepared remarks at the start of Thursday's earnings call, cost cuts were one of his central themes. The broad-based changes under Jassy have left the company less dependent on its cloud business, Amazon Web Services, for profits. In the second quarter, Amazon was able to expand its overall margin while AWS's profit margin declined to 24.2% from 29% a year earlier. But at only 12% year-over-year growth, the cloud business is seeing its slowest expansion since Amazon began breaking out its revenue in 2015.

Persons: Andy Jassy, Jeff Bezos, he's, Bezos, Jassy, Jassy's, Amazon Organizations: New York Times, Amazon, North America, Amazon Web, AWS Locations: New York City, riskier, North, America

☆ Amazon is reorganizing some cloud-computing services, like EC2 and Lambda, into a new team, leaked email shows
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-18 | by ( Ashley Stewart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Amazon Web Services created an "AWS Compute Services" team, an email viewed by Insider shows. It combined services such as EC2 and serverless products like Lambda into a single organization. Amazon Web Services created a new "AWS Compute Services" team, according to an internal email viewed by Insider, combining services such as its Elastic Compute Cloud and container and serverless products including Lambda into a single organization. Deepak Singh, the vice president who previously ran AWS containers and serverless products, is leading the new AI organization. Barry Cooks, the vice president who runs the Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service, now reports to Brown.

Persons: Deepak Singh, David Brown, EC2, Holly Mesrobian, Brown, Nick Coult, Ajay Nair, Spencer Dillard, Ahmed Usman Khalid, Barry Cooks, Jody Gibney, Ashley Stewart Organizations: Amazon Web Services, Insider, Lambda, AWS, Web Services, Compute Services, Service, Registry

☆ The future of Amazon's Honeycode cloud service is not looking so sweet
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-14 | by ( Eugene Kim | Ashley Stewart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Amazon's AWS Honeycode app-building software is being phased out. It's business application team has struggled. Another Amazon business application is struggling. This time it's AWS Honeycode, a cloud-based app-building service. Besides Honeycode, Amazon has axed the Halo health band, the Scout delivery robot, and a number of long-term projects from its Grand Challenge moonshot lab.

Persons: Honeycode, they're, hasn't, Slack, Sriram Devanathan, Adam Bosworth, Adam Seligman, Seligman Organizations: AWS, Amazon, Service, Amazon Connect, SAP, Google, Microsoft

☆ Generative AI is bringing back cloud demand after IT budgets were slashed, and this boom could be a big win for Amazon, analysts say
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-10 | by ( Ellen Thomas | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Deal cycles are back to closing at about 30 to 60 days in Q2, a Mizuho Bank report said. The demand for generative AI, which operates in the cloud, has driven the stabilization. The big cloud-computing budget cut could be subsiding thanks to generative AI, and Amazon Web Services could benefit massively, according to a new survey of CIOs from Mizuho Bank. CIOs who were focused on trimming cloud budgets in the first quarter are now looking to spend those savings on generative AI. Customers are especially excited about Bedrock, Amazon's foundational model for developers to build generative AI on, because of its privacy features, the survey said.

Persons: CIOs, Mizuho, Bernstein, Bard Organizations: Mizuho Bank, Amazon Web, Mizuho Bank's, AWS, Microsoft, Google, Analysts Locations: Mizuho, OpenAI

☆ Microsoft and Google will be the biggest short-term beneficiaries of A.I., says Jefferies' Brent Thill
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-03 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

In this videoShare Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailMicrosoft and Google will be the biggest short-term beneficiaries of A.I., says Jefferies' Brent ThillJefferies' Brent Thill joins 'Squawk on the Street' to discuss cloud consolidation impacting AWS's path to recovery, pricing in A.I. 's impact, and the growth trajectory for tech's magnificent seven.

Persons: Jefferies, Brent Thill Jefferies, Brent Thill Organizations: Microsoft, Google

☆ Leaked document shows Amazon is in talks to expand its cloud contract with the Dutch government. It just passed a major privacy test, too.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-30 | by ( Eugene Kim | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Amazon and the Dutch government are in talks to significantly expand the cloud deal between them. Amazon just passed an important data privacy test by the Dutch government. Amazon Web Services is in discussion to significantly expand its cloud contract with the Dutch government. The deal talks are taking place in the midst of a series of Dutch audits over AWS's data privacy measures, according to the document. Last week, AWS passed the Dutch government's Data Privacy Impact Assessment (DPIA), a key part of complying with Europe's General Data Protection Regulation, known as GDPR.

Persons: Amazon's, Eugene Kim Organizations: Amazon, Dutch Ministry of Justice, AWS, Security, Data, New York Times Locations: Government

☆ I got a job at Amazon without a college degree. 5 years later, I lead an AWS team, bought a home, and have zero student debt.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-14 | by ( Fidel Contreras | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Fidel Contreras is a data center operations lead at Amazon Web Services (AWS). Contreras applied to an AWS technical learning program and started as an apprentice at age 18. Five years and one promotion later, I now lead a team of data center operations technicians. I take advantage of ongoing AWS skills trainings, like the Cloud Practitioner and Solution Architect courses. Fidel Contreras is a data center operations lead at Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Persons: Fidel Contreras, Contreras, I'd, It's, —, there's Organizations: Amazon Web Services, Morning, Amazon, AWS's East, AWS, Cloud Practitioner Locations: America, AWS's East Oregon

☆ Apple's Vision Pro isn't just a 'headset,' stupid — it represents the next big frontier of spatial computing
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-09 | by ( Peter Csathy | Fearless Media | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

He writes that Apple's latest $3,500 gadget is not just a VR "headset," but a bigger tech opportunity: spatial computing. Apple at long last revealed its long-anticipated "next big thing" — its Vision Pro — two days ago at its annual WWDC. "Minority Report" come to lifeViewed with the broader lens it deserves, however, Apple's Vision Pro represents so much more. It represents the dawn of an entirely new mass market and transformational tech opportunity of so-called "spatial computing." Spatial computing is essentially the film "Minority Report" come to life, three-dimensional computing divorced from the confines of physical screens.

Persons: Peter Csathy, Nanea Reeves, Tim Cook, Ralph Lauren, Joanna Popper, Bob Cooney, Evan Helda, Pierre, Stuart Rostain, Amy Allison, Tripp, Mark Zuckerberg, Apple's, Steve Jobs, Cook, Bob Iger, Jobs, Iger, Read Organizations: Creative Media, Morning, Fearless Media, Apple, CAA, Barnum, Amazon, Spatial Computing, European VRDays Foundation, Women, Disney, Pixar, Creativie Media Locations: Malibu, Netherlands

Google and the generative AI startup Runway have a huge new cloud computing contract. Google and Runway have a major new contract that provides the generative AI startup will millions of dollars in cloud services and related credits. Recently, Runway raised $100 million at a $1.5 billion valuation from a top cloud provider, Insider reported. Cloud giants like Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft have also run startup programs for years that provide free cloud credits. Previously, Google Cloud salespeople even expressed concern they wouldn't be able to match AWS's offer of free cloud credits to startups.

Persons: there's, Airbnb, Pinterest Organizations: Google, Runway, Lux Capital, Web Services, Microsoft, AWS Locations: OpenAI

☆ Wall Street analysts say Amazon is still a buy, but investors should ‘stay patient’ on AWS
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Sarah Min | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Amazon is still a buy after its latest earnings results, even with some weakness in Amazon Web Services, according to Wall Street analysts. The online retail stock initially jumped Thursday night after Amazon reported better-than-expected revenue in its first quarter . Amazon shares were last down about 1% in the premarket. AMZN 1D mountain Amazon shares 1-day However, analysts stayed bullish long term on Amazon, citing continued upside in retail, but they urged investors to "stay patient" on AWS and look toward the long-term opportunity in cloud services. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs' Eric Sheridan reiterated his buy rating on Amazon, and raised his 12-month price target to $165 from $145.

☆ Club meeting recap: Stocks gain, Eli Lilly, Amazon
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Kevin Stankiewicz | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Every weekday the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer holds a "Morning Meeting" livestream at 10:20 a.m. Stocks head for winning week Discipline with Eli Lilly Stick with Amazon 1. Watch Eli Lilly The Club is looking to book some profits in pharmaceuticals giant Eli Lilly (LLY) when our trading restrictions are lifted. But the Club continues to see a bright future ahead for Eli Lilly, which raised its full-year outlook this week. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER .

☆ Amazon is the growth laggard of the cloud industry now
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Ellen Thomas | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Amazon said cloud revenue trended down by 500 basis points in April, suggesting year-over-year growth of 11%. The three largest cloud companies reported results in recent days and the growth picture for Amazon Web Services is, well, cloudy. Microsoft's Azure cloud unit grew sales by 31% year over year in the first quarter, while Google Cloud reported a 28% increase. So that suggests a year-over-year growth rate of just 11% for the early part of the second quarter. AWS is still the largest cloud provider, but if Microsoft continues to outgrow Amazon every quarter, the gap will narrow.

☆ Amazon services AWS and Alexa back up after brief outage
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-16 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

April 16 (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) said its cloud computing division Amazon Web Services (AWS) and its voice assistant service Alexa were back online after a brief outage on Sunday. Alexa was down for thousands of users in the United States, according to Downdetector, while hundreds of users reported issues with accessing AWS. Users also reported issues accessing Amazon's mobile app. Alexa is now operating normally, an Amazon spokesperson told Reuters in an email. AWS on its website said services have recovered from an issue in which AWS users were unable to complete the account signup process and were receiving error messages regarding their billing console.

☆ Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says his letter to shareholders follows one of the toughest economic years in recent memory. Read it in full.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Sam Tabahriti | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +38 min

Further, as machine learning adoption has continued to accelerate, customers have yearned for lower-cost GPUs (the chips most commonly used for machine learning). While some areas of the economy have struggled over the past few years, Amazon Business has thrived. Some people have never heard of Amazon Business, but, our business customers love it. For years, Amazon customers had asked us when we'd offer them an online pharmacy as their frustrations mounted with current providers. More recently, a newer form of machine learning, called Generative AI, has burst onto the scene and promises to significantly accelerate machine learning adoption.

☆ Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says he's confident he can get costs under control in shareholder letter
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Annie Palmer | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +38 min

☆ Leaked Amazon all-hands messages suggest 'single-digit' percentage cuts to 180,000-employee AWS, which still means at least 1,800 could get laid off
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-21 | by ( Ashley Stewart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Amazon's latest round of layoffs will include "a small, single-digit percentage" of cloud employees. Employees hoped a cloud unit all-hands would shed some light, but it provided little information. Amazon's latest round of layoffs will include "a small, single-digit percentage" of the employees in the company's massive Amazon Web Services cloud unit, according to leaked internal messages and employees present at the unit's all-hands meeting. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy on Monday announced plans to cut 9,000 employees, on top of the 18,000 layoffs the company announced earlier this year. Employees hoped a cloud unit all-hands would shed light on the plans, but according to internal Slack messages and employees present on the call, AWS CEO Adam Selipsky revealed little beyond saying a single-digit percentage of the cloud unit would be impacted.

☆ Amazon just asked its software engineers to start using a new in-house AI tool, rather than ChatGPT
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-16 | by ( Eugene Kim | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told employees last month that generative AI is a "significant area of focus" for the company. Amazon wants its engineers to start using its own ChatGPT-like artificial intelligence tool at work, as it looks to catch up in the AI chatbot space, Insider has learned. "Amazon CodeWhisperer is an AI-powered coding assistant that provides real-time recommendations in your IDE based on your existing code and comments," the email, titled "Start using Amazon CodeWhisperer today," said. The move signals Amazon's behind-the-scenes efforts to join the AI chatbot race, where it has been noticeably absent in the public space. He also said Amazon's investment in this space will only increase, highlighting the maturation of generative AI, which powers many of the AI chatbots.

☆ These charts show just how much cloud spending has slowed at Microsoft, Amazon, and Google
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-09 | by ( Paayal Zaveri | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

The slew of big tech earnings confirmed that cloud growth is slowing and no one is immune. Microsoft, Amazon, and Google all say customers are looking for ways to lower their cloud bills. These charts show just how much cloud growth slowed at the big three cloud providers. These charts show just how much cloud growth slowed at the big three cloud providers:When Microsoft reported earnings results, Wall Street was shocked to see just how much cloud spending had slowed. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella acknowledged customers of Azure's cloud services were cutting spending, but said he's optimistic spending will bounce back.

☆ Amazon's AWS just notched its slowest growth in years. It expects customers to tighten their belts even more.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-03 | by ( Paayal Zaveri | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Amazon's cloud business is seeing a slowdown in growth as customers reduce spending. Amazon's execs say AWS growth will decline even further this quarter. All of that translates into less spend at Amazon Web Services, or AWS — Amazon's cash cow that brought in revenues of $21.4 billion last quarter. Analysts were expecting a slowdown in growth after Microsoft also reported slowing cloud growth last week. As corporate customers look to save money in an economic downturn, they want to cut their cloud costs, CEO Andy Jassy said.

☆ Amazon has only gotten started with its ambitions to be a serious player in healthcare. Here are 3 acquisitions it could make next year.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-20 | by ( Rebecca Torrence | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

The next month, it abruptly announced it would shut down Amazon Care, its app-based primary-care service for employers, three years after launch. In November, Amazon launched Amazon Clinic, a virtual service where patients can pay Amazon directly to get treatment for common conditions like allergies and acne. Natalie Schibell, a vice president and research director at Forrester, said that was a sign Amazon had learned from its mistakes at Amazon Care. When Amazon shuttered Amazon Care, it put those mental-health ambitions on hold. Lennox-Miller said Amazon could buy health data startups the company had already invested in, like the health-equity-focused Harmony Health or the value-based-care data company Clinify Health.

☆ Amazon's cloud business just reported its slowest growth ever, and executives hinted it could get even worse
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-27 | by ( Eugene Kim | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Amazon's cloud business grew 27% in Q3, the slowest pace since disclosing that number in 2014. CFO Brian Olsavsky said the growth rate was even lower in the back-end of the third quarter. On Thursday, Amazon's cloud business reported a 27% revenue growth rate for the third quarter, the slowest expansion since the company started disclosing the number in 2014. During Thursday's analyst call, Olsavsky said AWS's growth rate decelerated as the third quarter progressed, falling down to the "mid-20% growth rate" in the latter part of the period. To help those customers, AWS is offering lower-priced options and a more cost-efficient chip processor service, he said.

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